


Starting Points

by BlackMarketTrombones



Series: Flash Fiction [27]
Category: POKEMON Detective Pikachu (2019)
Genre: Gen, Gender Confusion, Mewtwo please descend from the sky and tell me your real canon preferred pronouns pls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 15:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20048560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackMarketTrombones/pseuds/BlackMarketTrombones
Summary: Tim wants to know how his father managed to catch the strongest Pokemon in the world.





	Starting Points

The thought occurred to Tim about two weeks after…everything.

"Hey, Dad?" And wasn't that weird to say still. Harry looked up from his laptop, reading glasses slipping down his nose a bit. “How’d you even catch Mewtwo in the first place?”

“Oof.” Harry pushed back from his desk, and Pikachu took it as in invitation to hop up onto his lap. “Well, they gave me a Pokeball that can capture any Pokemon.”

Tim waited. “…That’s it?”

Harry scratched absently behind his partner’s ears, and the little Pikachu chirped happily and squirmed in place. Tim tried not to stare, but he still wasn’t used to it’s real personality. “Not really. Y’know, I had a bad feeling about the job from the start. No real clarity on whether it was official police work or not, and who hires an _investigator_ to catch a Pokemon?”

“So, why’d you agree to it?” Tim moved a stack of reports off the nearest bar chair and sat down. “Couldn’t you, I dunno, turn down the assignment?”

Harry shrugged. “Curiosity killed the Delcatty, as they say. And if some mysterious organization wanted control over a legend, I wanted to know why.”

Tim could see that. “Okay, so what, you just tracked Mewtwo down and chucked this super special Pokeball?”

“No.” Harry’s brow scrunched, like Pikachu’s had when the clues wouldn’t line up. “It was the strangest thing. Mewtwo actually found _me_. Didn’t seem too pleased about it either. Kinda got the impression it was expecting someone else. Or I would have if it was a human. He?”

“It’s twenty-nineteen, Dad.”

“…They?”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Kinda doubt we’ll get the chance to ask. So what then?”

Harry huffed a little laugh. “Well, we weren’t exactly battle-ready at the time, were we bud?”

“Pi-_ka!_”

“Just sat down for a camp dinner, actually. And all anyone had talked about was how difficult this ultra-powerful Pokemon would be to find and catch, so you can imagine how prepared we were for him to float down and say hey.”

Tim tried to picture it and couldn’t. His dad and Pikachu’s reactions, sure, but Mewtwo was too inscrutable.

“That’s when you…” He mimed an overhand Pokeball throw.

“I didn’t exactly have the Master Ball handy,” Harry pointed out. “Luckily, I’m a fast-talker. Managed to explain enough to catch his attention before he took off. We ended up agreeing to work together to figure out what PCL was up to, since anyone they sent after me probably would not be as open to collaboration.” Harry winced. “It worked eventually, I guess.”

There was a story there, beyond everything that had happened after Tim entered the picture, but he wasn’t sure how to go about asking yet. “So basically, you cheated,” he said with mock-severity.

“_Hey_, now. Weren’t you always saying the best trainers can convince their Pokemon to join them without having to battle?”

He had, Tim realized, parroting some once-famous trainer he barely remembered anymore. He didn’t know whether the memory made him want to smile or cry.

“I guess,” he said. “Is that what happened with you and Pikachu?”

Harry’s expression grew fond as he scritched under Pikachu’s chin.

“That’s another story entirely.”


End file.
